Re: Water Treatment Videos

[dcq1974]

Cheers Chris
The kettle elements still look good after an ever increasing number of brews, so far so good Good clean with Citric Acid after every brew session always does the trick!

[delta9]

No, not a bad thing but you wont see the sort of benefits that I did, with your water being pretty close to ideal for pale ales and bitters as it is.

If you have the stuff to hand (ie CRS and a good syringe), do it, if not or you wake up one day and can't be arsed, don't bother. You shouldn't have too much in the way of mash related brewing problems with your water straight from the tap. A tsp of gypsum is mostly always going to be beneficial though and doesn't take any effort to drop into the mash.

Thanks Chris, I have ordered CRS, so may as well have a go.

[dcq1974]

Just one more major query I have on water treatment. I always "Burtonise" my Northants (hard as nails) water with CaSO4 (Gypsum) CaCl2 and MgSO4 (according to target bitter values from Murphy & Sons website and using GW liquor treatment calculator to yield a 2:1 Sulphate to Chloride Ratio). I add these to all my mash and sparge liquor etc.

One thing that puzzles me is that I find it easiest to carry out the CRS treatment, leave 5 - 10 mins then heat the water and add the salts when the water is fairly warm/hot as to easily get them to dissolve. Is this the correct thing to do? Or is it best to add gypsum to the mash tun with the grist?

I assume breweries actually treat the liquor and not add to mash tun? Is there a right way?!

Also did I read somewhere that it is best to add MgSO4 last (after addition of Gypsum and CaCl2) as this can interfere with the calcium content?

Finally - do a lot of you Crafties also add a teaspoon of gypsum to the boil as standard?

Either way I find it easy to dissolve them direct into the HLT pretty easy when making a brew.

Cheers for any comments

[dcq1974]

Cheers Chris
A great and educated reply as ever

[dcq1974]

Now now Chris, don't be so Hard (H2O) on yourself

[dcq1974]

[delta9]

Just got my CRS bottle and did a quick test...

My water is 42.7mg /l CaC03

Added 0.10ml CRS to 1 litre, which resulted in 17mg /l CaC03
Overdone the CRS lol

Think I'll just go for it on brewday and treat the 30L, adjusting the CRS slowly and re-testing it until I reach around 25mg /l CaC03

[dcq1974]

Yep to add to Chris's comments, I did a alkalinity check and started with a figure of 255 mg/l CaCO3, did the test mix, played around for half an hour and then got a figure I was happy with which was 225 mg/l. That's an error of over 10%!!! The final figure when I checked was very close to the figure given by my H2O supplier.

Happy Brewing

[lewis1981]

Chris

i retested my water after CRS gypum, calcium chloride additions and the sample went straight to pink. is this because it became too acidic. i drained off some of the treated water and topped back up until the indicator solution went blue again when testing, and then tested and added water until i got a residual alkalinity of 30mg/l. is this right as this was my first time with water treatment. i used grahams water treatment calculator for the calcium additions and worked out my CRS addition on the basis of 1ml of crs neutralises 180mg/l of alkalinity. any advice please.

Lewis

[andysmok]

I have just done my first test using the salifert KH kit. I followed Chris's youtube video and to my amazement i only had to put in a couple of drops of KH before the colour started to change. 0.05 i used out of the syringe before i had the pinky grey tinge,

so; 0.28meq/l x 50 = 14mg/l CaCO3

Does this figure seem correct? If it is what do i need to add to my water.

[Aleman]

Agree with Chris most of the North West has water with a pretty low alkalinity . . .water coming either from Lake district the West Lancs Pennines or Wales. All of which are fairly low in alkalinity and usually pretty soft.

[andysmok]

My water is supplied from the river Dee apparently. The averages I got from my supplier is 42CaCO3. I asume that i don't need CRS then but I will need salts?

[jonny8ball]

hi lads

right so i test my water now what do i do??

Salifert KH Test kits says =4.23m/l so now what happens is there a sum iv got to do like:

x by 50 =211.5mg/l

so now in got result 211.5mg/l how do i treat my water

big thanks if some one`s got the time tell me how all new to this,bin using bottled water and its getting to costly if you no what i mine

[jonny8ball]

so this is all i need to add just the crs to my water and off i go brewing

[tim]

Thanks for this really helpful thread and the video - have just received my test kit so will hopefully improve on my current boil and bung water treatment!
Just one query ... there's another bottle in the box - Alkalinity check solution 7.2 dKH +/-0.3 - just visible at the start of the video, but no reference at all to it in the instructions in the box... is it for another test?